Latest news with #KleberMendonçaFilho
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘The Secret Agent' Review: Wagner Moura Tries to Leave History Behind in Kleber Mendonça Filho's Beautifully Remembered Period Thriller
In his 2023 essay film 'Pictures of Ghosts,' a haunted cine-memoir that uses Recife's once-glorious movie palaces as a lens through which to examine — and to mourn — the cultural amnesia of a country so determined to forget itself, Brazilian auteur Kleber Mendonça Filho somewhat counterintuitively observes that 'Fiction films are the best documentaries.' If Mendonça had to make a documentary in order to illustrate that idea, the sober but gripping thriller that it inspired him to shoot next proves the point with gusto. Born from the process of researching 'Pictures of Ghosts' (a fact that becomes rewardingly self-evident over the course of its 158-minute runtime), 'The Secret Agent' recreates 1977 Recife with even more vivid detail than Mendonça's documentary was able to restore his childhood vision of the city through archival video and photographs alone. Focused but sprawling, the director's first true period piece is absolutely teeming with the music, color, and style of the 'Brazilian Miracle' that marked the height of the country's military dictatorship, and yet all of those signifiers — along with most direct evidence of the military dictatorship itself — are sublimated into the movie's pervasive sense of mischief. More from IndieWire 'Militantropos' Review: Another Staggering Ukrainian Documentary About What War Actually Looks Like 'Fuori' Review: Valeria Golino Shines in Mario Martone's Tribute to Maverick Italian Writer Goliarda Sapienza That's the word Mendonça uses to identify the time period in the film's opening title card, and it accurately sets the scene for a story less rooted in the terror of Walter Salles' 'I'm Still Here' than in the wistful barbarity of Wes Anderson's 'The Grand Budapest Hotel.' Of course, those movies both hinge on the tragic poignancy of their stolen pasts, and this one does too — but slowly, and with a much softer approach to the way that memory persists in spite of the gangsters who might work to erase it. Far from the high-octane spy picture that might be suggested by its title (a title that's easy to imagine written in giant letters across the marquee of Recife's São Luiz Cinema), 'The Secret Agent' only bumps into espionage tropes as if by accident, and its protagonist seems to be as confused by them as we are. Mendonça's movie operates at the pace and tenor of a drama in exile, albeit one that's fringed with B-movie fun and stalked by a pair of unscrupulous hitmen. The film's story begins in media res, and while the plot couldn't be easier to follow, it fittingly requires the audience to earn every morsel of the context they'll need to appreciate its power. A middle-aged man who marries the quiet confidence of a cowboy with the 'I don't want any trouble, here' demeanor of an extra who just wants to survive the trigger-happy Western around him, Marcelo could be an anti-military Communist, but he could just as easily be a tech researcher who has personal business in Recife. That duality is at the heart of Wagner Moura's deceptively recessive lead performance — a performance that Mendonça mines for its errant sense of mystery from the movie's opening scene, in which Marcelo smooth talks a dirty cop at a highway gas station where a corpse has been rotting in the sun for several days. 'I'm almost getting used to this shit,' the station owner spits, alarmed at how fast he's adjusted to the reality of doing whatever business he can with a dog-eaten body lying next to the pump. Change comes fast in Mendonça's Brazil, and it's hard to blame people for doing their best to roll with the punches. Marcelo eventually arrives in Recife at the height of Carnival ('91 Dead!' the newspapers exclaim, with plenty more to come), where he moves into an apartment complex run by a feisty 77-year-old woman who shelters dissidents in need of a place to stay as they look for a way out of the country. The space also provides a home to the parents of Marcelo's late wife, and to the young son they shared before she died. It even comes with a covert job of sorts, though we learn very little about the specifics of the counterintelligence network that lands Marcelo a gig at the government office that mints government identification cards. (Certain vagaries are essential to this film about filling in the blanks, while others merely chip away at our understanding of what's at stake.) It's also the building whose archives might contain the only documented proof that his mother — disappeared from the Earth long before this story begins — ever existed in the first place, and Marcelo is determined to find it before he makes a break for the border. Alas, time will be of the essence here, as a bureaucrat who Marcelo crossed up north has dispatched a pair of contract killers to 'shoot a hole into his mouth.' And if they don't get him, Recife's shit-eating chief of police (Roberio Diogenes as Euclides) and his fascist deputies probably will, though he takes a shine to Marcelo that could prove useful in a pinch. Including Marcelo and his kid, all three of the film's rival factions are father-son teams, a choice that highlights Mendonça's gentle emphasis on the relationship between lineage and identity — and the defiant notion that history is as hard to erase as DNA. 'Can I see my blood?' someone asks while in the process of getting it drawn, a simple aside that captures so much of what Marcelo is hoping to accomplish in this story, to say nothing of what has motivated Mendonça, whose mother was a historian, to excavate the memories of his hometown in films like 'Neighboring Sounds' and 'Aquarius.' 'The Secret Agent' doesn't really tie a bow on that motif until the final minutes, which are set within one of the jarringly sterile flash-forwards that are littered across this story, but Mendonça tends to prefer crisp texture over clear point-scoring (as fans of his more fun and anarchic 'Bacurau' could attest), and this vibrant memory palace of a movie isn't in much of a hurry to get to its punchline. That's mostly to its benefit, as the movie — always compelling, but sometimes more sedate than its material demands — is often at its most alive during its detours. A scene featuring an agitated Udo Kier as a bullet-scarred Jewish tailor stands out for the contrast it draws between the permanence of scars and the mutability of the conclusions that people draw from them, while a loaded subplot about a disembodied leg evolves from a literary device to a full-blown Quentin Dupieux gag as Mendonça uses it to kick a hole into the fence between awful facts and urban legends. We also meet a cat with two heads, but I can't pretend to have a clear read on the meaning behind that just yet. The cat-and-mouse chase that's fueling the plot does boil over into a gnarly shootout (Mendonça's approach to gore continues to be a thing of beauty), but, to the potential disappointment of anyone hoping for another hit of that 'Bacurau' high, 'The Secret Agent' is consistently less interested in action than consequence, and less interested in scene than scenery. You can feel the filmmaker's dream-come-true ecstasy at being able to recreate the golden age of Recife's cinemas, which backdrop several key moments and tee up a recurring obsession with 'Jaws.' Ditto the joy he gets from rendering the city's streets in magnificent widescreen, and filling them with punch-buggies, bell-bottoms, and so many great Tropicália-accented songs that the critic sitting next to me spent the entire movie Shazam-ing every scene. I obviously stabbed him to death with my pen at a certain point, but I made sure to steal his phone for reference when the screening was over. That joy is contagious enough to feed into the bittersweet story Mendonça wrote as a conduit for it, and to deepen the ultimate impact of its argument that movies can manufacture a meaningful history of their own — one powerful enough to cut through the erosion of truth, and the official record of a country that might be too ashamed of its own reflection to honestly look itself in the mirror. With 'The Secret Agent,' Mendonça exhumes the past as the basis for a purely fictional story, and in doing so articulates how fiction can be even more valuable as a vehicle for truth than it is as a tool for covering it up. 'The Secret Agent' premiered in Competition at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution. Want to stay up to date on IndieWire's film and critical thoughts? to our newly launched newsletter, In Review by David Ehrlich, in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the best new reviews and streaming picks along with some exclusive musings — all only available to subscribers. Best of IndieWire The 25 Best Alfred Hitchcock Movies, Ranked Every IndieWire TV Review from 2020, Ranked by Grade from Best to Worst
The Guardian
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Falling palm trees and a faltering Palme d'Or director: how Cannes 2025 went – and who will win
Cannes this year had a lot to live up to after last year's award-winners, headline-grabbers and social media meltdowners Anora, The Substance and Emilia Pérez. It makes reading the signs now that bit more difficult: the bizarre event on the Croisette boulevard this year was a palm tree falling over. If it happened in a film, the metaphor would be unbearable. Whether 2025's Cannes movies are going to spark a new burst of overwhelming excitement remains to be seen, though this year's vintage feels good – often excellent, although even the biggest names can get it wrong: former Palme d'Or winner Julia Ducournau presented an incoherent drama called Alpha. This was a Cannes competition whose great movies were about political cruelty and tyranny. Jafar Panahi's A Simple Accident was about a fortuitous event that unearthed horrifying memories in Iran. Kleber Mendonça Filho's glorious, sprawling, Elmore Leonard-esque film from Brazil, The Secret Agent was about the 1970s dictatorship – interestingly, both films showed petty officials taking bribes. Filho's wretched cops are bought off with some cigarettes – Panahi's crooked security guards carry a debit card reader so they can take contactless payments. But for sheer existential grandeur of evil nothing could touch Sergei Loznitsa's Two Prosecutors – about the Stalin 30s, with its Dostoyevskian and Kafkaesque moments of despair. And to go with these views of the patriarchy, there were daddy issues. Joachim Trier's Sentimental Value showed Stellan Skarsgård being insufferable with his daughters – the preening Egyptian movie star played by Fares Fares in Eagles of the Republic infuriates his son, and Josh O'Connor's hapless art thief in Kelly Reichardt's The Mastermind is a very neglectful dad. And in the Dardenne brothers' compassionate and poignant movie Jeunes Mères, about a care facility for teenage mothers, the fathers were conspicuous by their absence. So here are my prize predictions, followed by my extra Cannes Braddies, my personal awards in other sections which should exist, but don' d'Or The Secret Agent (dir Kleber Mendonça Filho)Grand Prix Two Prosecutors (dir Sergei Loznitsa)Jury prize A Simple Accident (dir Jafar Panahi)Best director Carla Simón for RomeríaBest screenplay Mascha Schilinski for Sound of FallingBest actor Josh O'Connor for The MastermindBest actress Yui Suzuki for Renoir (dir Chie Hayakawa)Braddies for prize categories that don't exist but shouldBest supporting actor Stellan Skarsgård in Sentimental Value (dir Joachim Trier)Best supporting actress Tânia Maria for The Secret Agent (dir Kleber Mendonça Filho)Cinematography David Chambille for Nouvelle Vague (dir Richard Linklater)Production design Roger Rosenberg for Eagles of the Republic (dir Tarik Saleh)
BBC News
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
The Secret Agent review: Kleber Mendonça Filho's 'stylish and vibrant political thriller' could be an Oscars contender
Set in the military dictatorship of 1970s Brazil, this buzzy crime drama, which has premiered in Cannes, "makes up in pulpy excitement what it lacks in subtlety", and "bursts with sex, shoot-outs and sleazy hitmen". One of the biggest sensations of this year's awards season was I'm Still Here, an Oscar-nominated drama about the cruelty of the military dictatorship in 1970s Brazil. Now there's another film with the same subject matter – and it, too, could make a splash when awards season rolls around again. That's not to say that The Secret Agent is quite as sensitive as I'm Still Here, but Kleber Mendonça Filho's stylish and vibrant political thriller makes up in pulpy excitement what it lacks in subtlety. Set in the northeastern city of Recife during the raucous week of carnival celebrations, it bursts with sex and shoot-outs, sleazy hitmen and vintage cars – and it features a severed human leg which is found in the belly of a shark. You'd have to assume that Quentin Tarantino is already the film's number-one fan. Still, for all its brightly coloured, grindhouse flashiness, The Secret Agent is rooted in the real anxieties and tragedies of ordinary citizens. Indeed, its hero isn't a secret agent at all, even if Wagner Moura (Civil War, Narcos) is as tall, dark and handsome as any of cinema's super-spies. He plays the mild-mannered Marcelo, who is first seen driving into Recife in his yellow Volkswagen Beetle. It's about an hour before his identity and back story are revealed – The Secret Agent doesn't go anywhere in a hurry – but we eventually learn that he is a widowed academic who objected to a government grandee's attempts to steal his patented research. A big mistake. Marcelo now plans to reunite with his young son, who has been living with his in-laws, and to obtain the documents he needs to leave the country. In the meantime, he works undercover in a public records office, where he hopes to find even a shred of official evidence of his late mother's existence, and he stays in a dissidents' safe house overseen by a wonderfully chatty seventy-something mother hen (Tânia Maria). Even before he reaches Recife, Marcelo happens upon a corpse on a petrol station forecourt, which no one has got around to removing, so he isn't naïve about life in what an opening caption waspishly calls "a period of great mischief". But he is shocked when he hears that his old adversary has hired two assassins to track him down, and he is appalled by the amorality of the local police chief (Robério Diógenes). Filho and his cast have a gift for creating characters who are either movingly honourable or grotesquely evil. The police chief falls into the latter category. When he reads a newspaper headline stating that 91 people have died during the carnival, he cheerily bets that the total will soon reach triple figures. Despite all the danger and corruption in the humid air, Marcelo has an amused tourist's eye for Recife's eccentric goings on. He laughs in disbelief at a cat with two faces, at his son's obsession with seeing Jaws at the cinema, at the number of people having sex in public places, and at a surreal urban legend about the aforementioned severed leg hopping back to life and kicking the men in a cruising ground. For some viewers, The Secret Agent will have a few of these humorous detours too many. Running at more than two-and-a-half hours, it rambles here and there, hanging out with the numerous characters who dream of escaping from Brazil, like the patrons of Rick's Café in Casablanca. More like this:• Revenge thriller is favourite for top Cannes prize• Gay romance The History of Sound is 'too polite'• The 'dazzling centre' of Wes Anderson's new film But one of the film's key themes is the question of what is remembered and what is forgotten, and Filho, who grew up in Recife, seems intent on putting all sorts of quirky details on celluloid lest they be erased forever. As well as imbuing his hardboiled espionage yarn with richness and comedy, these lovingly realised period details add to the quiet melancholy that Moura radiates: one way or another, Marcelo won't be in Brazil to enjoy these sights for much longer. Anyway, just when The Secret Agent seems to be drifting too far from its central plot, it jolts back into focus, as the hitmen dump a body off a bridge, or an enigmatic contact promises to forge Marcelo's passport. An expertly choreographed chase through the city streets makes for a superb, bloody climax, but, as in I'm Still Here, there are still haunting questions to be answered and mysteries to be solved. For one thing, whose leg was that in the shark's belly, anyway? ★★★★☆ -- For more Culture stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
Daily Mail
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Simone Ashley looks effortlessly chic as she flashes her abs in a triangle bra and white satin co-ord on arrival for Cannes Film Festival
Simone Ashley looked effortlessly chic in a white satin co-ord as she arrived for the 78th Cannes Film Festival. The Bridgerton star, 30, touched down in the south of France on Thursday for the iconic film festival. She looked radiant as she arrived at Hotel Martinez on day 10 of the festival, sporting a cut two-piece. Simone sported a cropped waistcoat with a matching skater skirt, as well as a triangle bra underneath as she flashed her abs. She accessorised with a £3,300 Opaline Prada Galleria handbag, a pair of light blue flip flop kitten heels and red sunglasses. From A-list scandals and red carpet mishaps to exclusive pictures and viral moments, subscribe to the DailyMail's new Showbiz newsletter to stay in the loop. This year's Cannes Film Festival is taking place in the wake of Trump´s vow to enact tariffs on international films. Cannes, where filmmakers, sales agents and journalists gather from around the world, is the Olympics of the big screen, with its own golden prize, the Palme d´Or, to give out at the end. Filmmakers come from nearly every corner of the globe to showcase their films while dealmakers work through the night to sell finished films or packaged productions to various territories. 'You release a film into that Colosseum-like situation,' says Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho, who´s returning to Cannes with 'The Secret Agent, a thriller set during Brazil ´s dictatorship. 'You've got to really prepare for the whole experience because it´s quite intense - not very far from the feeling of approaching a roller coaster as you go up the steps at the Palais.' Trump sent shock waves through Hollywood and the international film community when he announced on May 4 that all movies ' produced in Foreign Lands ' will face 100 percent tariffs. The White House has said no final decisions have been made. Options being explored include federal incentives for U.S.-based productions, rather than tariffs. But the announcement was a reminder of how international tensions can destabilize even the oldest cultural institutions. The Cannes Film Festival originally emerged in the World War II years, when the rise of fascism in Italy led to the founding of an alternative to the then-government controlled Venice Film Festival. In the time since, Cannes´ resolute commitment to cinema has made it a beacon to filmmakers. Countless directors have come to make their name. This year is no different, though some of the first-time filmmakers at Cannes are already particularly well-known. Kristen Stewart (The Chronology of Water), Scarlett Johansson (Eleanor the Great) and Harris Dickinson (Urchin) have all unveiled their feature directorial debuts in Cannes´ Un Certain Regard sidebar section. Many Cannes veterans have returned, including Tom Cruise (Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning), Robert De Niro - who received an honorary Palme d´Or 49 years after Taxi Driver premiered in Cannes - and Quentin Tarantino, who paid tribute to low-budget Western director George Sherman. Simone's Cannes appearance comes after she declared earlier this year that she's in her 'single era' after revealing she had split from her boyfriend of three years - Constantin 'Tino' Klein, the boss of a company that organises ice races in Austria. And it appears the actress is channelling her struggles into music for her forthcoming debut pop album. She recently said: 'Sometimes I feel a song is storytelling and sometimes songs that were maybe written from a place of heartbreak end up being a dance cry banger. 'One of my songs has been influenced by heartbreak. There was one song that was written from a place of heartbreak. 'It was a really grey weekend when I was writing it, then when we went to the studio, the sun came out and I had a few months of distance from the song and it turned into something really positive.'
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Wscripted Unveils 2025 Cannes Screenplay List Supporting Women & Non-Binary Writers
EXCLUSIVE: Wscripted has unveiled its fifth Cannes Screenplay List, in partnership with global streamer and distributor Mubi. The 2025 list showcases projects from 14 female and non-binary filmmakers and screenwriters seeking producing and financing partners. (scroll down for full list). More from Deadline Mubi Acquires Kleber Mendonça Filho's Cannes Competition Title 'The Secret Agent' Joachim Trier's 'Sentimental Value' Wows Cannes In Premiere, Gets Extraordinary 19-Minute Ovation Cannes Film Festival 2025: Read All Of Deadline's Movie Reviews Among the nominees is Emmy-nominated Kenyan American filmmaker Peres Owino, who co-wrote Netflix's African Queens – Njinga and Queen Cleopatra, and is now developing feature film The Basket Weaver, from her own original screenplay. The list also features New York writer, comedian, and singer-songwriter Liz Nico and L.A.-based trans writer, director and artist Jules Byrne, whose debut feature Summer of 69 premiered at this year's SXSW as a Hulu original film. The pair are collaborating on rom-com feature Jane Hates Miranda. Further nominees include Filipina American actor, filmmaker, and Sundance fellow Kristine Gerolaga, with horror feature Lamok. Spearheaded by Wscripted's founder and CEO Ellie Jamen, Wscripted's Cannes Screenplay List was launched in 2021 to support women and non-binary writer-directors, with a focus on film. It has championed 92 diverse projects since its inception. The initiative was designed to mirror the market dynamics between international sales agents and distributors during the Cannes's Marche du Film, with a focus on pushing deal opportunities for female-led projects in early to late stage development. This year's shortlist was revealed during an event in Cannes, with nominees in attendance to pitch their projects and a fireside chat featuring Mounia Meddour (Papicha, Houria), who has previously supported the initiative as a jury member. Other previous jurors include Vanessa Kirby. This year's jury featured Emmy and BAFTA TV Award nominee Nava Mau (Baby Reindeer), filmmaker Fawzia Mirza (The Queen of My Dreams), and director Erica Tremblay (Fancy Dance). Mau made history as the first trans woman nominated for both Emmy and Bafta TV Awards for her performance in Baby Reindeer and won an Independent Spirit Award for the role. Beyond acting, Mau also directs. Her short film All The Words But The One screened in festivals around the world and competed for the prestigious LGBTQ Iris Prize. 'We know that the film industry is in need of significant culture change, and I'm honored to support this effort to amplify the power of women and non-binary filmmakers,' she said. Mirza's Pakastani-Canadian comedy The Queen of My Dreams starred Amrit Kaur as a woman, whose relationship with parents was strained after she came out as a Lesbian. The film will be released in the U.S. by female-led distribution labels Willa and Product of Culture on June 20. Following screenings at TIFF and SXSW, the film won prestigious awards from the Directors Guild of Canada and Canadian Screen Awards, marking a significant achievement in Canadian cinema with the film's groundbreaking portrayal of queer love and identity. Tremblay, an alumna of the Second Wscripted Cannes Screenplay List with her debut feature film Fancy Dance. Starring Lily Gladstone as a Native American woman who takes her niece to a state powwow while searching for her missing sister, the film was acquired and released by Apple TV in summer 2024. Tremblay is currently a co-executive producer and director on AMC's series Dark Winds. 'Fancy Dance is a story about Native women and the deep responsibility they often carry in our communities. I wanted to show how love and care persist, even in the face of loss and systemic injustice. My work centers Native characters who are fully human: messy, funny, complicated. My next project is a horror feature, and I'm excited to explore those same complexities within the genre space,' she said. Tremblay emphasized the importance of initiatives such as the Wscripted Cannes Screenplay List. 'They help open doors that are often closed to women and other marginalized voices. These spaces make it possible to meet the right creative partners, to build lasting collaborations, and to receive meaningful support from fellow filmmakers and jury members who genuinely believe in your voice,' she said. Wscripted's Cannes Screenplay List has been presented in partnership with Mubi since 2022. The company regularly champions female directors, with recent titles including The Substance by Coralie Fargeat. Bird by Andrea Arnold, Dahomey by Matt Diop, and How to Have Sex by Molly Manning Walker. The full list of nominees: Acids by Tamar Feinkind Alma Aparicio by Jesahel Newton-Bernal El Baca by Michelle Calderon Jane Hates Miranda by Liz Nico & Jules Byrne Lamok by Kristine Gerolaga Livingstone by Robin Henry & Pearse Lehane Long Story Short by Simbi Hall Piper by Katy Dore Satoshi by Sara Crow & David Rafailedes Show & Tell by C.C. Webster The Basket Weaver by Peres Owino The Seahorse by Devon Kirkpatrick To The Sea by Vanessa Magic With Your Permission by Sahar Jahani Best of Deadline Every 'The Voice' Winner Since Season 1, Including 9 Team Blake Champions Everything We Know About 'Jurassic World: Rebirth' So Far 'Nine Perfect Strangers' Season 2 Release Schedule: When Do New Episodes Come Out?
